A technology company had fallen prey to the wiles of Hector Monsegur, the most notorious cybercriminal for Anonymous when the crook had successfully waged a phishing scam on twelve of the company’s newly hired employees in its IT department.
Their names had been meticulously selected out of social media. He sent these unknowing victims an email that mimicked a company note which asked them to login to their company’s wiki site. The email seemed very authentic and legitimated because he used a link that exactly resembles a subdomain on the company’s website. Hence, the twelve employees were successfully conned.
DNS enumeration is Monsegur strategy to locate an unused subdomain on the company’s site. These nonfunctioning links direct website visitors to a third-party service. Monsegur setup his phishing site on that same web address. That is why his bogus login page looks as if it was within the company’s network. Six of his targets heeded to this gimmick. With this operation, Monsegur was able to gather all the necessary information that he can use to manipulate the entire network and destroy the company.
All these shenanigans took place six months before. If he had performed this mischief five years in the past, then he would have actually stolen all those data and released them all over social media to give glory to his former hacktivist group. However, this ex-con seemed to have gone through a change of heart. He had instead reported his discovery to the company’s management. In return, Monsegur received a significant amount as payment for his services.
Yes! The infamous hacker in the United States has now been working as a legitimate security advocate for a certain security firm in Seattle. He leads a team of six people to deliberately meddle into a client’s network with the intention of discovering flaws and weaknesses to the system. They will then report their findings to their client so that the company will be able to create the necessary patches to cover the holes that they have discovered.
He used to be the leader of the most notorious online hacker group. After that, he switched sides and became an informant to the FBI exposing the plans of those crooks that he used to work with. But this time, it seemed that the former outlaw had a paradigm shift that led him to go on the side of the law instead.
Several companies have already started to accept Monsegur’s repentance. They are willing to put their trust in him to test the security of their system. Only one among the majority of supportive clients had doubts about the criminal’s reliability.
Monsegur had also asserted and assured the public that he is a renewed man now. He is no longer the crook that they used to know. His priorities have changed and his now more concerned about his family.
